


Mother of Stags

by LyaStark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Prompt Fic, cersei lannister/robert baratheon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 09:49:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyaStark/pseuds/LyaStark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a child, when Cersei dreamed of the children she would have, they were always golden haired dragon princes and princesses with indigo eyes. Or perhaps green eyes like hers and Jaime's. But few things in her life turned out as she dreamed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother of Stags

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kink Meme prompt: Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen do not exist. Mya, Bella, Gendry, and Barra are Robert and Cersei's trueborn children.

As a child, when Cersei dreamed of the children she would have, they were always golden haired dragon princes and princesses with indigo eyes. Or perhaps green eyes like hers and Jaime's. But few things in her life turned out as she dreamed.  
  
The king she wed was a stag, not a dragon. That king had freed her brother from his Kingsguard vows, sending him all the way across Westeros to Casterly Rock… and the bride their father had chosen for him. And the children she dreamed of had hair as black as pitch and stormy blue eyes, just like Robert’s. One after another, they came into the world and were as similar to each other as she and her twin, with only the years to set them apart.   
  
Mya was first. Robert doted on the girl. Like a child with a new toy, he played with her every day and cherished her beyond reason. He didn't even complain that she was not the son and heir he needed. Cersei thought she would find nothing of herself in this child or any other the king put inside of her. But as Mya grew, the little girl's troubles seemed to mirror her own.  
  
"Why can't I dress in breeches and leathers like father and Uncle Renly?" Mya asked her one day while the seamstress was fitting her for a new gown, yet another garment for her to sit still in. "I want to wear breeches and go hunting and play with the animals."  
  
"You're too beautiful for all of that," her septa simpered. "You'll learn needlework soon and mayhaps your mother will allow you to have a little kitten to play with."  
  
 _Too beautiful,_ Cersei thought bitterly. Too beautiful to wear what she liked. Too beautiful and useless to be a true heir.  
  
"My daughter is the crown princess of Westeros, you fool," Cersei told the septa. "She will wear what she likes and play with whatever beasts she chooses. If you deny her what she wants again, I’ll cut the tongue from your head myself."  
  
Four years passed between Mya and the twins.

Cersei wished to deprive Robert of the male heir he had begun to despond over. A part of her also hated the idea of putting Mya through the same pain she experienced at being passed over by a younger brother for committing the sin of being born a girl. But gossip began to spread that the king's councilors were suggesting Cersei be set aside in favor of a younger lady who might provide him with a boy. To keep hold her place and forestall that younger queen who meant to take what was hers, Cersei stopped taking her moon tea.  
  
The twins she pushed into the world were the opposite of each other in every way, except for their resemblance to each other. From the start, Bella was the livelier of the two. She grew into a girl so giddy and high spirited, she reminded Cersei cringingly of Robert's oafishness. Gendry was quiet and serious and had very little in common with his father. As they grew, there seemed to be no twinly bond between them, no special connection that only they shared, as there had been with Cersei and Jaime. They were mere siblings.  
  
Though relieved to have his son at last, Robert openly favored Bella. She laughed for him easily and rarely cried. Gendry had little patience for him and would cry, more often than not, whenever the king bothered with him. Cersei couldn't but love him for that. She found herself doting on the boy who looked upon her with seriousness and awe. And he did not shy from defending her honor.  
  
No one dared tell the king when he was wrong. Except for his son and heir. Gendry was only ten when Robert made a fool of himself and his queen by openly favoring a lowly girl from House Darke. Some whispered that she very well might become his official mistress or rise even higher.   
  
When Robert had her seated embarrassingly close to them at a feast, Cersei gathered up her dignity and stomped out of the Great Hall, rage sending a quiver through her hands. But the raised voice that followed brought her to a stop.   
  
"I will _not_ sit down," Gendry's voice echoed through the hall. “I will _not_ sit here while you shame my mother, you _drunken sot_.”  
  
The boy soon followed her out and she saw his sullen face clouded in fury. Without a word, he offered her his arm like the gallant prince he was trained to be and they had their supper in her solar. 

"He may be a Baratheon," Genna wrote to Cersei after she heard, "but he has something of his grandfather in him too."  
  
 _Something of_ me, Cersei thought.  
  
She saw little of herself in Bella. The girl took to being a princess with ease. She did as she was told, wanted the things she was told to want and nothing more, and lived to please everyone, especially her father. Cersei couldn’t think of her as anything but a fool and a puppet. It wasn’t until she was five-and-ten that they seemed to hold any amount of common ground.   
  
“You said we could have anything we wanted,” Bella cried. “’Princesses of the Iron Throne can have what they like,’ that’s what you always say! This is what I want.”  
  
What she wanted was a landed knight who could scarcely afford armor fine enough to compete in a tourney. He had sandy hair, a comely smile, and he had crowned her with the champion’s laurel. That was all it took to win Bella’s heart.  
  
 _Fool_ , Cersei wished to call her. But then she thought of how Jaime had crowned her at the tourney celebrating her marriage to Robert and how much she ached for him in the years since.  
  
She took Bella’s face in her hands. “You will marry a great lord or a prince of Dorne. But a princess can have what she wishes…if she has a wit about her and is careful. Wed who you must and bring who you want to your bed, just as your kingly father does.”  
  
Cersei arranged a visit to Casterly Rock with her daughter… and brought a certain young knight with them as part of their retinue. While Bella took what she wanted from that dull boy, Cersei did the same with her golden Jaime.   
  
By the end of the two moon visit, Bella had tired of her knight and Cersei found herself with child. She was so certain the babe was Jaime’s, she invited him to the birthing. He refused to leave her side as labored, though her husband had fled to the trees days before with no intention of returning until he was certain her time had passed.  
  
The labor was short compared to her first two. But the results were disappointing. The babe placed in Cersei’s arms already had that thick black hair she was so used to. She held the girl only a few moments before claiming fatigue. It seemed she would never have the golden child she longed for.   
  
Robert was pleased, yet indifferent at the arrival of the girl. By the time Barra arrived, the novelty of babies had long worn away for Robert, what with all of his trueborn and bastard children. Other than approving of her beauty, so similar to his once handsome looks, he had little to do with the babe.  
  
If Barra had been Jaime’s, Cersei wouldn’t have let him hold her at all in case someone became suspicious. But as she had nothing of him in her, Cersei made no objections when he soothed the babe between her feedings and let her fall asleep in his arms.   
  
“Sweet sister, don’t you dare call me a fool when I say this,” Jaime began one morning as he walked Barra around the room.  
  
“Don’t say anything foolish then, who knows who might walk in,” Cersei said.  
  
“When I held my own girls like this, I sometimes pretended they were yours,” he said. “Little Cerseis, all three of them.”  
  
“Fool.” She did not have that luxury. None of her children were little Jaimes.   
  
Jaime only laughed.   
  
A fortnight later, he was gone back to Casterly Rock. The sight of him riding away all but tore her in half. The separation was all the worse given how long it had been since they were together and how much longer it would be until they reunited.  
  
Each time she was weak enough to miss him, Cersei found herself seeking out Barra and rocking her the way Jaime had.   
  
“You should have _ours_ ,” she chastised the babe as her blue eyes fluttered shut.   
  
But she was _hers_. They all were. And that was enough to make her love them. 


End file.
